I’m a fan of Firebug, so I gave it a try. It delivers a JavaScript file that you can embed into your AIR project for debugging. You get a window with different tabs that are comparable to what you get with the Firefox Firebug extension. BTW, try the new Firefox 3 beta. It’ll boost your surfing experience ;-).

Additionally, I’ve to mention the free Aptana IDE Community Edition, based on Eclipse that has an AIR extension. I’ve tested Aptana to develop some HMTL pages and JavaScript snippets, and it seems to be useful for this. So, developing an AIR application with it could be very interesting. Flex Builder 3 beta 3 (90 days demo) also offers to create AIR applications from your Flex code.

Although, having an eye on Flex for some time now I had no time left to have a deeper look at the desktop stuff. It’s quite interesting to find applications for AIR, even with a beta 3 release, that are fully functional, and seem to be quite stable.

Some already show, how Web 2.0 will look on the desktop, e.g. the Google Analytics Reporting Suite or the eBay Desktop. Both are pretty cool in their user experience and offer advanced functionalities in comparison to the existing service frontends.

As I’m also a hobbyist in digital studio music production, I couldn’t resist to play the emulation of the legendary 909 drum computer. Pretty cool for the first implementation of an AIR application.

You may click the start button ;-).

For me all this looks cooler than a Java Web Start based RCP implementation, whereas a Netbeans-based one was the worst in the past. Although, we have to wait for the real killer apps, like SlideRocket, to start comparing both platforms for speed, usability and design aspects.

About

Rainer Eschen is an agile coach with a focus on Agile Project Management.
He is a Certified Professional Scrum Master I, a Certified Project
Management Associate (IPMA Level D) and co-founder of openPM.
Since the mid-1990s Rainer worked as a consultant, developer, architect, team leader, systems engineer, project manager, scrum master and scrum coach – since 2000 with a strong focus on JEE. He was also part of “the source” for 3 years working at Sun Microsystems, Germany.
Rainer is author of the book ICEfaces 1.8: Next Generation Enterprise Web Development, Packt Publishing, 2009. In 2013 he started the Blue Scrum Book Series, describing his idea of an agile project management.
Rainer at Google+ (Page) | Twitter